


Extraction

by ChrissiHR



Series: It's the Great Countdown, Darcy Lewis [14]
Category: Expedition Unknown, Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Drama, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Humor, October 14, October Prompt Challenge, Once bitten twice shy, Promptober, RPF, RPF/Darcyland Crossover, SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Wordcount: Under 10.000, great white, song prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChrissiHR/pseuds/ChrissiHR
Summary: Night 14 ...in which Darcy bails out her ex with the full might of Asgard.





	Extraction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phoenix_173](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenix_173/gifts).



> Prompt: Author’s Choice, Once Bitten, Twice Shy by Great White
> 
> Author’s Choice: Darcy Lewis/Clint Barton, past Darcy Lewis/Josh Gates
> 
> Pre-read by HKThauer 
> 
> Note: This story is so loosely based on the prompt, I’m not even sure it counts. Whoops! BUT, I always wanted to write Josh Gates into a Darcyland fic, so this ticks another item off my to-do list! Woot! [Josh Gates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSVx-i2NcaE&feature=youtu.be) hosts Expedition Unknown and used to host Destination Truth. I highly recommend clicking the highlight reel link and finding out more about him, if you're not familiar with his work.

“How does he look?”

Darcy exhaled down the phone line as she eyed the ruggedly handsome archaeologist and his executive producer through a two-way mirror in a totally-not-KGB-anymore, interrogation room. They were at least half a mile underground in a frigid bunker just a few miles south of the frozen border marker for Siberia. She wished she’d brought a warmer coat.

“Like bad decisions taste.”

“That good, huh?” Jane, best friend and future Queen of the Nine Realms, chuckled.

Wagging her head back and forth, Darcy had to concede, “Better.” She drifted closer to the two-way and peered through the glass. “God, is he wearing leather in Siberia?” 

“Uh oh—”

“Don’t.”

“I’m just saying, you’re developing a bit of a leather—”

“I’m not,” Darcy hissed. She totally was.

“Barnes was held in Siberia. Barton lives in that leather jacket contraption with the studded shoulders. Maybe the leather thing is—”

“Not helping, Janey.”

“Sif just checked with the Russian consulate,” Jane offered up instead. “Gates’ and Barsky’s travel papers are clean and in proper order. Officially, Russia says they’re not holding him. Unofficially, they really want him off Russian soil right now, like, this second.”

Darcy sighed. “Sif brought more Einherjar, didn’t she?”

“They’re illegally holding a member of the U.N. special academic envoy to Asgard. The U.N. and Asgard both take that very seriously.”

“I swear, Janey, I warned him to lay low until after the Asgard trip.” Darcy turned and growled at the Russian border patrol officer trying to tell her her time was up. Like hell was her time up on her own damn phone.

“Natasha says sometimes the border patrol guys stir up trouble out of boredom or for a power trip.”

Indeed, one of the border patrol officers in the room appeared to be talking shit to Barsky, looming over him and shaking a rifle in the terrified TV exec’s face. Josh kept his cuffed hands on the table in plain view, eyes trained on its stainless steel surface like a guy who’d been held in an underground interrogation room more than once in his life.

If Hawkeye and Indiana Jones had a lovechild with even worse luck and sense, it would be Josh Gates.

“Gotta go save Josh’s bacon, Janey. Call you back in ten.”

“Unless they start shooting,” Jane grumbled.

“Unless they start shooting,” Darcy agreed, tapping the screen to end the call. She turned to her border patrol escort, switching to Allspeak so there could be no confusion about her intent. “ _Those are the men I was sent to retrieve. You are holding them illegally, according to your own government. If your co-worker shoots them, Asgard will wipe this base from the map and you with it. A grease stain on Siberian soil is all that will remain for your mothers to cry over._ ”

Her own personal escort shifted where they stood at her back, shoulders squared, spines stiff. She knew they made an imposing, six-foot wall of Aesir muscle.

The border patrol’s eyes widened. “We want no trouble. You take men. Leave Siberia.”

“I intend to.” Darcy pushed the man aside, striding to the interrogation room door with a full contingent of Einherjar at her heels. She kicked the door open and raised her sidearm to ready position. “ _I am Darcy Lewis, Senior Diplomatic Service Agent to the Sovereign Realm of Asgard. I’ve been sent by order of Prince Thor of Asgard and the U.N. Special Liaison to Asgard to retrieve these men, both of whom are diplomatic envoys of Earth to the Nine Realms. By admission of your own state department, you are holding them illegally. Lower your weapon, or I will be forced to shoot. You will receive no further warnings_ ,” she ordered the officer in the room in Allspeak. Then, she barked at the others, “Gates! Barsky! Get your stuff, we’re leaving.”

Josh didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled to his feet and bent over to grab his pack from the floor. The border patrol officer in the room objected, despite his comrades’ vociferous demands to stand down. He moved to lift his rifle and went down like a ragdoll instead, a perfect, laser-cut ring smoking in his skull where flesh and bone used to be, from an Einherjar tesseract rifle.

“Get your things,” Darcy ordered again, firm and commanding.

The Einherjar brandished their weapons and all lingering resistance melted away in the face of what remained of their comrade. Shocked, reeling, Barsky stumbled to gain his feet at Josh’s insistent tugs. They grabbed their abandoned equipment bags and day packs, waiting only long enough for one of the Einherjar to use another laser cutting tool to remove their cuffs. The humans stuck to Darcy like glue, following her up the winding stairs to the surface. Barsky started to ask once about taking the elevators, but Darcy shook her head and held a finger to her lips. She didn’t trust the damn Russians not to cut the cables or blow the damn base with them still inside it and try to call it an accident. The sooner and safer they got to the surface, the better.

Ten minutes that felt like five hours later, they were filing onto quinjets and longboats for the return flight to the embassy in Moscow.

“I’m surprised to see you,” Josh said under his breath when they were safely on board and away, standing between the co-pilot seats in the cockpit where Darcy sat beside her personal guard, piloting the lead quin.

“Not my choice, Josh. I was sent.”

He cursed under his breath.

“The U.N.?” he asked, hopeful.

Darcy snorted. “You wish.”

Josh sighed, shoulders slumped in defeat. “Rogers sent you. Captain America knows I came a cropper on my day job two weeks before leaving on a trip as part of a special envoy to another dimension. I’m the astronaut who gets arrested in a titty bar fistfight a week before the shuttle launches. That’s what I am right now. Are there mugshots? Of course, there are mugshots. I’m not going, am I?”

He plunked his ass down right there between the co-pilot chairs.

“Pepper managed to keep it quiet. She’s not happy with you, but Tony’s done worse, so consider the yardstick you’re being measured by in this moment. Also, Hawkeye totally knows.” Darcy snickered, mentally adding another tally mark to the “Who’s the bigger Actual Human Disaster?” scoreboard on the side of the Avengers common room fridge. Josh’s column was added to the Avengers scoreboard when he managed to get himself arrested for punching a cop during a romantic, Valentine’s weekend trip with Darcy. Their first Valentine’s trip together.

And their last.

“Fantastic.” Josh laid back and banged his head on the floor.

“What’s the bet at now?” she demanded with a laugh.

“Two cases of that fancy, imported shit Clint drinks when I’m losing.” He crossed his arms over his face and mumbled, “Only when I need to get bailed out. It’s four if he ever has to come do it himself, so I guess I should count my blessings.”

“You could have been killed.” Darcy sobered immediately.

But Josh only shrugged. “They didn’t have anything on us. Our paperwork was in order and we had permission from the state to be where we were. I know bored, border patrol guards when I see ‘em, Darce.”

“They were holding you against orders.” She took a deep breath. “Hydra still has a strong foothold in Siberia. This trip was reckless. It was stupid and reckless and I’ll tell you what else—”

“Stupid?”

“ _Yes..._ ” she hissed. “So very stupid. You have one job to do from now until you leave for Asgard—do not get arrested or shot. The United States is temporarily grounding you to U.S. soil until the Asgard trip. It is a  _gift_ ,” she emphasized when Josh opened his mouth to argue. “Because I voted to throw you in the brig at the Moscow embassy until the Bifrost touches down in two weeks.”

Josh pursed his lips. “I don’t think embassies have brigs. At least, I don’t think I’ve ever been in one, and I’ve been arrested a  _lot_.” He twisted to look back and up at Barsky. “We ever been thrown in an embassy brig?”

“Embassies don’t have brigs,” Barsky answered absently, thumbing through his phone and checking in with the rest of the production team they’d been separated from two days earlier.

Josh lifted a hand at Barsky for Darcy’s benefit as if to say, “ _See?_ ”

Disgusted with his business-as-usual attitude, Darcy curled her lip and gripped the quinjet controls tighter in her gloved fists.

“Were you worried about me?” Josh’s lips tipped up in a smile. She couldn’t see it, but she heard the smugness in his voice and itched to wipe it off his face.

“No, but I bet your wife was.” Darcy arched a brow and cast a long, loaded look his way.

He waved her off. “Hallie knows how this kind of stuff goes. I’ll call her to check in when the sun is up on the West Coast.”

“Send her a text.” Darcy handed over her phone, open to her latest convo with Hallie. A dozen very freaked out texts.

“She sent you.” ‘SHIT’ branded across his faces in big, bold, I-done-fucked-up letters, Josh sat up and cradled his head in his hand tapping out a rapid-fire text to let his wife know he was okay.

“She’s in Moscow and she is going to flay you alive for leaving her at home.”

“Her mom was sick.”

“Yeah, and then you got arrested and guess what became the higher priority, Josh,” Darcy snarled.

“But why call you—why not call—”

“She didn’t call me. She called Clint.”

“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.” Josh lost the will to live, slumping back onto the floor in a dejected puddle.

“And she didn’t send me, she sent him. I just came along for the show of Aesir force.” Darcy thumbed at the co-pilot seat where her guard lifted his loaner Einherjar helm and grinned, teeth sparkling like a toothpaste commercial.

“Barton.” Josh’s face fell and he groaned, pounding his fists and wriggling on the floor in humiliation like a fish on the line.

“Yup, and that’s four cases, asshole,” Clint reminded their friend. “None’a that cheap stuff, either.”

“Who sends an Avenger to pick up a D-list, TV host in a Russian border patrol prison?” Josh demanded. “Don’t you have better things to do?”

“Clearly, he does not.” Darcy snickered, banking for the turn to fly in low over the embassy.

Everyone quieted at the sight of the group of anxious people awaiting their arrival.

“I know what I owe Barton,” Josh said to Darcy as he readied to disembark, “but what do I owe you?”

“Two weeks. Stay out of trouble.” Darcy bussed him on the cheek as the jetway lowered to reveal Josh’s wife waiting with tear stained cheeks on the rooftop. “And Hallie’s going with you to Asgard,” she lifted her voice to add as he jogged down the ramp. He turned and tossed a salute over his shoulder with a grin before sweeping Hallie up in his arms.

“You forgot to call Jane,” Clint reminded Darcy when the future queen arrived on the rooftop.

“She would have worried until we touched down anyway.” Darcy dismissed his reminder, shrugging her day bag over her shoulder and twining her fingers with Clint’s. “I’ll kill him myself if he so much as breathes in the direction of trouble in the next two weeks,” she promised her boyfriend, eying her ex’s reunion with his wife.

“The beer he’ll owe me is a good deterrent.” Clint gathered her close for a kiss. “And that bet was all your idea. Good call.”

“He’s a walking disaster. Somebody had to look out for him.”

“There aren’t many people who’d wade into that Russian mess with nothing but a gun and a raised voice for their ex, Darce.”

“I didn’t do it for him. I like Hallie.” She lifted a shoulder in a one-armed shrug. “And I like to see him squirm. Fight me.” She stuck out her tongue and laughed when Clint yanked her down the ramp to chase after Josh and remind him about the beer.


End file.
